LCC and Wiring Continues
Slower than desired, but better to do it right now than try to fiddle it in later....
In my last staging yard, I never did install feeders. Instead I just counted on the continuity of the turnouts to carry power to each of the 16 staging tracks. Bad idea. ~Most~ stayed powered up over the 10 or so years it operated. ~Some~ randomly dropped out... necessitating fishing and soldering wires onto tracks with 7" spacing between decks. Not uber-fun at all.
SO... with GNW Phase 3, I promised myself ALL track would have feeders every 6' (one feeder per 2 sticks of flex), plus additional feeders in any other complex areas such as yard throats. This would also allow me to have every other stick of flex not have to be soldered at the track jointers, allowing for expansion and contraction of the benchwork.
BUT... this comes at a cost. Instead of 16 single ended tracks, I elected to have a 9-track staging yard, each track capable of holding 3 trains. (WHY I ever went to 9 tracks is beyond me. Things in 8's work out SO much better in LCC, but that is another story for later.) Really, I do know what happened. I laid out the 8 track staging yard and found that I could squeeze one more track in. Then I reasoned I could have 8 tracks of staging with one "run-through" track, which would be extra cool since NONE of my previous layouts had any kind of continuous run connection. I could finally just let a loco or entire train run to break in or even for visitors to "see some trains run.
Anyway, 9 tracks with 3 blocks each, each block around 12' long or 2 sets of feeders for each, times 2 rails per track works out to.... well... 108 drops! Careful what you wish for - you might get it. So it's been a slow and tedious process to wire out staging.
That said, we are getting there. All but the last 3 block on the west end are wired out. Each block wire pair is brought to a "node" where the leads are connected to a bus terminal block being fed from the staging breaker. One of each of the leads includes a detection coil, which is wired to a RR-Cirkits BOD-8. The BOD-8's are plugged into an RR-Cirkits Tower LCC node.
Remember how I was saying that in LCC things work better in 8's? The Tower-LCC is set up for 16 I/O, and is designed to allow plugging in of 2 BOD-8's. The BOD-8 has inputs for 8 detectors. I am using Ethernet cable to wire between the current detectors and the BOD-8's; Ethernet cable has 4 sets of 2 conductors, perfect for wiring one half of a BOD-8, and the input on BOD-8's are set up as halves on each side of the board (nicely done, Dick Bronson!). This would have been soooo easy to wire had I stuck with 8 tracks. Oh well, a little more sales for RR-Cirkits, and I got my run-through track.
About half way through wiring out the BOD's, and just a few more staging tracks plus the helix and the staging deck will be done. Oh, and the turnout drives....
Some pix for your perusal.
In my last staging yard, I never did install feeders. Instead I just counted on the continuity of the turnouts to carry power to each of the 16 staging tracks. Bad idea. ~Most~ stayed powered up over the 10 or so years it operated. ~Some~ randomly dropped out... necessitating fishing and soldering wires onto tracks with 7" spacing between decks. Not uber-fun at all.
SO... with GNW Phase 3, I promised myself ALL track would have feeders every 6' (one feeder per 2 sticks of flex), plus additional feeders in any other complex areas such as yard throats. This would also allow me to have every other stick of flex not have to be soldered at the track jointers, allowing for expansion and contraction of the benchwork.
BUT... this comes at a cost. Instead of 16 single ended tracks, I elected to have a 9-track staging yard, each track capable of holding 3 trains. (WHY I ever went to 9 tracks is beyond me. Things in 8's work out SO much better in LCC, but that is another story for later.) Really, I do know what happened. I laid out the 8 track staging yard and found that I could squeeze one more track in. Then I reasoned I could have 8 tracks of staging with one "run-through" track, which would be extra cool since NONE of my previous layouts had any kind of continuous run connection. I could finally just let a loco or entire train run to break in or even for visitors to "see some trains run.
Anyway, 9 tracks with 3 blocks each, each block around 12' long or 2 sets of feeders for each, times 2 rails per track works out to.... well... 108 drops! Careful what you wish for - you might get it. So it's been a slow and tedious process to wire out staging.
That said, we are getting there. All but the last 3 block on the west end are wired out. Each block wire pair is brought to a "node" where the leads are connected to a bus terminal block being fed from the staging breaker. One of each of the leads includes a detection coil, which is wired to a RR-Cirkits BOD-8. The BOD-8's are plugged into an RR-Cirkits Tower LCC node.
Remember how I was saying that in LCC things work better in 8's? The Tower-LCC is set up for 16 I/O, and is designed to allow plugging in of 2 BOD-8's. The BOD-8 has inputs for 8 detectors. I am using Ethernet cable to wire between the current detectors and the BOD-8's; Ethernet cable has 4 sets of 2 conductors, perfect for wiring one half of a BOD-8, and the input on BOD-8's are set up as halves on each side of the board (nicely done, Dick Bronson!). This would have been soooo easy to wire had I stuck with 8 tracks. Oh well, a little more sales for RR-Cirkits, and I got my run-through track.
About half way through wiring out the BOD's, and just a few more staging tracks plus the helix and the staging deck will be done. Oh, and the turnout drives....
Some pix for your perusal.
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| Feeders on the far right, leads to each block in the center, and BOD-8 on the left. Note the detection coils. Ethernet cable works great to tie the coils to the detection board. Powered up and testing; you can see the block status indicators lighting up as occupied. |
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| About wiring and LCC: Document everything! It is amazing how quickly the number of cables and connections add up. Trouble shooting later on will make life so much better if the work has a paperwork trail. |
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| I added wire tags to all leads to blocks and anything else that I thought could be confusing in the future. I got these tags off Ebay for super cheap... and free shipping. They work just fine. |
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| Preview of coming attractions: JMRI install and the LCC connection! |
Document, document, document. There's certain to be SOMETHING you'll forget to document, and several years from now, you'll miss it.
ReplyDeleteTrying to decide whether to finish some scenery stuff on my modules, or delve into detection. I've got all the RR-CirKits hardware, it's just... I just re-wired things about a year ago. Why didn't I do the detection THEN?????
It's fair to say the elephant in the living room of DCC is all that simplicity of "just 2 wires" quickly gets lost when doing detection. A lot of thought has to go into how to break up the layout and where to put track gaps. And it's not that easy to retrofit later, at least not without rewiring a lot of track wiring. I am almost through 300' of 2-conductor cable already, and just ordered another roll!
DeleteYea, more progress! You are wise to tag and document. I know your pain! Run through and double ended staging will be a great change! We are still wiring the lower level. I'm currently working on a shelf that contains 3 Digitrax SE8c's. Only one is complete. The two staging yards (detection and signaling) plus two new boosters are next. We are not even half way around the lower level yet. Hope to be running the main, sidings and yards by mid-October. Next Monday will mark two years of RR construction not including three months of room prep.
ReplyDeleteUpdates?
ReplyDeleteThanks for encouraging me to get back to posting. Yes a few. But work has been a bear and some home and family obligations have really limited hobby time. That said, you will see more soon! Again, thanks for the encouragement to get back to the train room!
DeleteTruly amazing!! One question/clarification. The wires attaching to the TBs are run out to the track, are those wires themselves hooked to the track as the feeders, or are you using these wires coming off the TBs as buses that run out to locations under the layout, then use the suitcase connectors to tap into the bus wire a wire that you have soldered to the track?
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to understand this as I've laid track on my new layout where I want to start using LCC (only tinkered with LCC on a module, last year, for turnout controls using TowerLCC and SMD-8s). On this layout I'd like to add detection for signals and operations, plus still have turnout controls. So trying to figure out the best way to wire for easy maintenance (your plan here seems nice instead of just running one big bus around the whole layout that you hook feeders too, and on those feeders you but the CT-Coils).
Lastly, can you elaborate on how and what you are documenting for maintaining this. I saw the screen of the spreadsheet, but was struggling to understand what was what.
Thanks!!!
Hello! The feeders are 14AWG and don't actually connect to the track. I run these under the track, and then use 22AWG feeders to actually connect to the track. The wiring is described in this blog post: https://greatnorthwesternrailway.blogspot.com/2019/04/wiring-to-track.html
DeleteAs for the documentation, it's just a simple Excel spreadsheet. The column titles and descriptions have been updated since I put this blog together, based on actual needs over time. The headers are:
ID (Just a sequence number)
Description (What the I/O does)
I/O Type (Input or Output)
I/O Function (Turnout, Detection, Signal Lamp, etc)
Node Type (Tower-LCC or Signal-LCC)
I/O Card Type (BOD-8, CP4, or whatever)
Node Address (I truncate to just the last 4 numbers, e.g., 01.80)
Card Slot (1 or 2)
Node I/O Point (1 thru 16 or whatever for the NODE)
I/O Card Point (1 through 8 or whatever for the I/O CARD)
CTC ID (Starting to ID all control points with this... probably should have done from the start!)
IO Soft Address (Description in JMRI PanelPro)
Card Location (Physical location of the card - east to forget over time!)
Hope this helps!